I don’t know how they ever noticed themselves but they are there!
Look who’s in the pool brochure?
Category Archives: Kids
Reading with Charlie
I’m claiming a parenting win.
Typical dinner scene: Katie automatically says she doesn’t like what we’re having and we tell her she needs to at least try it…then usually she doesn’t like it and we have a talk about how you don’t need to love everything but if it’s okay you can still eat it. She hates that and argues and whines and refuses to eat whatever.
Fast forward to last night. Owen was eating lime corn chips. She whines that she doesn’t like them. A few minutes later she’s eating them and Tom and I say “But you don’t like them!” And she matter-of-factly says (in her sassy DUH MOM tone) “But I can still eat things I don’t love!”
HAHA!!! I gleefully told her that’s exactly what we’ve been saying and now that she agrees with us, we expect no more complaining about food she says she doesn’t love. It took a minute but the look on her face when she realized…
I know the likelihood of that actually happening is low, but I’m still claiming a parenting win.
Katie is now a Shark!
After three years away from lessons, she leveled up after just a handful of lessons!
BSS then and now
A Facebook memory popped up that three years ago my kids were at British Swim School in Woodbridge, VA. Guess where they are tonight? 🏊♀️🏊🏻♂️
This is why I don’t do kid crafts.
I thought I was going to be Fun Mom™ and make Kool aid play dough with them. Katie loves play dough and Owen enjoys “cooking” so it would be perfect, right?
Seriously, like 30 seconds in and I’m annoyed because they had issues getting the ingredients out. Then mixing the dry ingredients was a mess because they didn’t listen and do it gently so there was flour all over (plus I got attitude from Katie because she just. wouldn’t. listen.) and then the whining while they stirred because it wasn’t mixing in PERFECTLY like they apparently thought it should.
Katie kept whining and complaining about the smell (one was Strawberry Lemonade and one was Fruit Punch?!) saying it was “awkward” (what?!). And once it was done, Katie decided she didn’t want to play with it.
😒
To his credit, Owen was good. Katie was the one who annoyed me the most.
Pinewood Derby
Owen took part in his first Pinewood Derby today! He and Tom have been working on his car for two weeks on and off and he was super excited! And he ended up winning third place in his pack!
Look at that happy face!!
These two. 💕
The boom thing and the wackers.
Katie just came up from playing in the basement with Owen with a story about the “boom thing and the wackers.” And expected us to know what the hell she was talking about. Any guesses?!
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Badminton-type rackets and balls. 😂
Kids are a hoot.
One of my all time favorite Owen pics…TEN YEARS AGO.
Sledding in what little snow we have!
The kids have a great time sledding at the church by us, but we wanted to take them somewhere new. This is at Hunt Club community center.
This cat has always put up with so much from Katie.
Two Golden Girls
Look what we decided to do this morning? Gold mask for the face and Lip Smooth for the lips! No, Katie (age 7), doesn’t need the mask but what little girl doesn’t want to put gold on her face?! (Also, you see it’s not her whole face. I’m not wasting it on her youth!)
A product only photo.
AND THEN…DAMN TECHNOLOGY. Katie and I tried to go live on Facebook to peel our faces off and it said it was live but then said our internet connection was low (which is very weird because we just got a new system and it works SOOOO much better than our old one). And then it looked like it was connected and then when I was done and went to hit publish, it said a live needed to be more than four seconds to post. WHAT?! Gaaaaaah. DAMMIT. I have no idea what happened or what’s wrong with our new system.
I so miss the top sprouts.
Katie is all of us.
I wanted Katie to try on these jeans at the thrift store but she didn’t want to so tried to do it over her leggings. FAIL. But isn’t this all of us at some point trying to get jeans on?
Gramma’s pics from Christmas in Grayling.
I forgot my mom gave me her pics so now they’re out of order. But all these were from our trip.
Owen gave us a saxophone performance.
And some silliness…
Katie decided to go barefoot in the snow like cousin Anna did one year.
Owen in two of his presents.
The family picture.
Katie was being kinda a stinker and left this sad note for Santa.
Tubing with the fam!
We all went tubing today at Hanson Hills!! I had never done it before but I am all about NOT having to walk up the hill!! I hadn’t been inside the building in probably 25 years…plus they’ve totally updated it…so how can it still smell exactly the same?!
Tubing was so much fun…but everyone else in Grayling had the same idea and there were too many people (IMO) so we only got three runs in! It only took about 10 minutes max to ride up and go down but they’re were so many people we were waiting 15 minutes in line. (The tow rope also broke for about 15 minutes—THANKS, MARIE!—so that didn’t help.)
Katie only went down twice—she got too freaked out that she was going to come out of the tube. I could actually understand—you really got going fast and I was initially a bit freaked out. I went down once with Owen, once with Tom, and then the last trip with Tom, Owen, Doug, and Robert!
Thanks to Gramma Jean for taking pics with my phone!!
Relaxed phone rules for a bit.
We relaxed the rules and let Owen use his phone for a bit to play Minecraft with his cousin Robert. (We allowed it since they also played an actual board game more than once!)
Bitmoji iPad tech support
So the iPad lessons have been continuing and tonight I was helping Mom setup Snapchat and Bitmoji because she wanted a fun Bitmoji.
We were having fun when Katie came in and wanted to help. It was funny. Gramma Jean was looking at the type of body to use and said “OH NO! I have to use the last one (plump)” and Katie spread her arms to the Heavens and said “No, make yourself skinny!” So damn cute. Mom and I laughed and laughed.
Here’s the first Bitmoji she published to Facebook!
They’re so sweet when they sleep.
This was last night at 12:31 after hanging out with cousins Robert and Gabby for a few hours.
Craziness with cousins!
Playing with presents!
I was trying to be more present so didn’t take many photos during…but this is the kids coloring and drawing in their Christmas presents. Arts and crafts are always good ideas!!
Happy Holidays from the road!
We’re headed to Michigan in our new car…which is stuffed to the gills!!
Let’s feed some kids!
Owen’s scout pack was volunteering at Feed My Starving Children so we all went!
Owen on bags and Katie on the weigh station. Four separate scoops of vitamins, veggies, soy (protein), and rice go in the bag, then it’s weighed (it has to be between 380-400 grams), then it’s sealed (my station), and then 36 bags go in a box!
The kids switched to the scoop station!
After, I might have also done some personal and Christmas shopping (each gift provides a various number of meals) plus bought a year’s worth of meals for a child.
We enjoyed it so much we will likely go back with friends to do it again!!
Kids unloading the dishwasher like…
The struggle is real, y’all.
Owen is famous!
Get this. Tom was watching YouTube videos of the Allure and we saw Owen! And then we saw the rest of our group! The kids were totally freaking out and joking that Owen was famous now!
It starts about 6:12. After that you will see us, too, after they do the quick walk-through of the restaurant. (This is just some random persons vlog. Nothing actual Royal Caribbean sponsored.)
Reading to Charlie!
Holiday Shop Setup!
So this is what the Holiday Shop at Owen’s school looks like at the very beginning. It’s a LOT of work to get the whole thing set up in three days. I don’t know how they do it every year so I volunteer for about 6-8 hours.
They’re both back at it!
Swim lessons started again today! They’ve both been asking me, and their lesson times finally backed up to one another, so it was time! They both needed a tiny bit of practice since they haven’t had lessons in over two years, but the instructor said they did really well!
This is Katie annoyed with the world because she couldn’t get her hair under her cap by herself but she refused to try and wouldn’t ask for (or let me) help. ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?
Our first real tree…ever.
Our first real tree since we’ve been together…and supporting the scouts! I really wanted a huge tree but we have very limited space for one. Also? There’s no way it was going in my new car—the days of hauling messy crap is over. 😂
We got rid of our fake tree last year because I was just tired of it…so we got a real tree this year! The plan was to get a fake tree in the after-Christmas clearance sales, but we might wait another year or two to see what house we have next. If we happen to get a house that will fit a 12′ tree…well, then I want a 12′ tree. 🙂 So this is the first time we have EVER had a real tree! (Note: the bummer? It doesn’t smell AT ALL.)
